Cum On Feel the Noize / Essential Yoga Truths

If you read the daily news about the latest in obesity research, you may find yourself getting stupider by the day. On one hand, society is heading over a cliff o' fatness and we're all doomed, and on the other hand, fat people seem to be healthier than thin people. Cum on feel this noize!

A report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was recently issued, entitled, "F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011". In a one year period, sixteen of the 50 states got more obese, and none declined. The report also looks at figures for the last twenty years: back then no state had an obesity rate over 15%, while now two thirds of all states are over 30% obese, and now only one state out of fifty is less than 20% super-chunky.

“Today, the state with the lowest obesity rate would have had the highest rate in 1995,” said Jeff Levi, Ph.D., executive director of TFAH. “There was a clear tipping point in our national weight gain over the last twenty years, and we can't afford to ignore the impact obesity has on our health and corresponding health care spending.”

Bobby "Wood" Johnson was teased about his name by fat kids growing up. Little did they know that he would get the last laugh....

There are break downs by race and income (summary -- the darker and poorer you are, the fatter you tend to be) and policy recommendations (summary -- the beverage industry will not be amused), as well as individual reports by state. My family's home state, NY, is the 11th least obese state, woooo! Still, at 24.1% of New Yorker's officially being Fatty McFattfatts, that doesn't seem so hot. Trimmest state? Colorado at 19.8%. State most super-sized? Mississippi at 34.4% Guess they need all those extra i's, s's and p's to help expel air as they try to pull up their pants.

Colorado rush hour commute. The fattest ones get eaten by bears.

To add some color to the story, the study's author gave some good quote to ABC News:

"With 6 million new cases of diabetes, 5 million cases of heart disease and stroke, and more than 400,000 cases of cancer in the next 20 years, we are on a tragic course that will have a horrible impact on the quality of life of millions of Americans and could overwhelm an already over burdened health care system," said Dr. Jeffery Levi, study author and executive director of Trust for America's Health.

We are heading over a cliff, sooner or later we will all be economically hobbled tubs o' goo enslaved to our P90X-worshipping overlords. Or will we?

In study after study, overweight and moderately obese patients with certain chronic diseases often live longer and fare better than normal-weight patients with the same ailments. The accumulation of evidence is inspiring some experts to re-examine long-held assumptions about the association between body fat and disease.

So what explanations are offered for this paradox?

1. More food delivers more calories, but also more nutrition. Skinny peeps might be skinny but under-fed.
2. Thin people are genetically programmed to become sick. Evolution has caused our bodies to seek out calories, and a survival-of-the-fittest has screened skinny people into the less-likely-to-survive group over millions of years.
3. Doctors give less attention to pretty skinny people than ugly fat people.
4. McDonalds is delicious so shut up. There is so much hype about obesity that we're missing a different factor.

And what could that factor be? The article hints that it may be "fitness". 

Research that does tease apart weight and fitness — like a series of studies conducted by Steven Blair at the Cooper Institute in Dallas — shows that being fat and fit is better, healthwise, than being thin and unfit. Regular aerobic exercise may not lead to weight loss, but it does reduce fat in the liver, where it may do the most metabolic damage, according to a recent study at the University of Sydney.

I'm living under the working assumption that to lose weight, I must eat less calories, but to feel good, I must maintain a certain level of fitness. This article would suggest that my "feeling good" also means maintaining a healthy, well-functioning body - regardless of weight.

There is another piece in the NY Times recently that looks at a study which looks at the relationship between exercise and weight-loss. In short, you do nothing, you lose no weight. You do some moderate exercise, you lose weight. You do a whole lot of exercise, you lose....less weight.

The men who had exercised the most, working out for 60 minutes a day, had managed to drop some flab, losing an average of five pounds each. The scientists calculated that that weight loss, while by no means negligible, was still about 20 percent less than would have been expected given the number of calories the men were expending each day during exercise, if food intake and other aspects of their life had held steady.

Meanwhile, the volunteers who’d worked out for only 30 minutes a day did considerably better, shedding about seven pounds each, a total that, given the smaller number of calories that they were burning during exercise, represents a hefty 83 percent “bonus” beyond what would have been expected, says Mads Rosenkilde, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Copenhagen who led the study.

The researchers suspect that the 60-min-a-day exercisers were not being totally accurate in reporting there calorie intake. Basically, the theory is that if you work out hella-lot, you get a lot more hungry and:

1. it becomes easier to over-eat.
2. encourages more periods of sedintariness as you're blown out from hard work outs.

A more moderate work out will leave you less hungry, less likely to over-eat, and instead of drained, you will be energized to be involved in a more active lifestyle.

Mitt Romney: "Perhaps if they were to exercise less and go get jobs, they'd be less hungry."

Not to brag (OK, I'm bragging), I kinda already knew this. I've been doing 100+ mile bike rides over the last decade, riding to work and riding for fun.  (That's, uh, three separate things, not 100+ mile fun bike rides to work.) And yet, multiple friends over the years have commented about how amazing it is that I ride so much, but still retain a nicely obese frame. Well, I ride off a certain number of calories, then I would thoroughly enjoy eating a certain number of calories... and then a certain number of calories more.

When discussing my weight routine with a close friend who shirked her own routine because it became too much for her, I told her I worked out twice a week for about 45 minutes. She was shocked, implying that wasn't nearly enough. I guess if you pay for a gym membership whose reason for existing is to get you to work out as much as possible, they're not going to direct you to the minimum it takes to see long-term results. My 2x weights, 1x long bike ride per week is working for me. I don't know if I'm "fit", but I'm definitely feeling good.

I feel the noize, and I'm trying to float above it while keeping my cool and not just throwing my hands up and giving in to my cravings for brownies and television. I had a close friend in 2000 who lived here but had residence in Florida, and she chose to use her absentee ballot to vote for Ralph Nader because she could not see any difference between Bush and Gore. She ain't my friend anymore. She could not feel the noize.

This is not a political blog, but when Big Beverage, Big Food and Big Farm kick up so much dust to create confusion about health to protect their profits, how can one not try to wade through the conflicting messages?

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Falling doesn't hurt that much  with a pair of gigantic invisible testicles. 

I took a yoga basics class with the HVS Friday evening, and an essential yoga truth was unveiled to me during the class. All those yoga people in crazy positions, like balancing their whole bodies on their pinkie fingers while splaying their legs? It's not because they are connecting to some magical spiritual force that allows them to deny the laws of physics. It is because they are as strong as hell. I guess a heady mix of vegan diet, comfy clothes, babbling in Sanskrit and doing stretches all day will do that to a person.

I only noticed because this was the first time I practiced yoga since I've purposefully been trying to lose weight and gain muscle. At first the poses seemed magically more easy and comfortable....am I connecting with the great Googamooga or Ghee or Yogurtmonster? No, I thought, I'm just a little more fit from regularly lifting up big round dumb pieces of iron. It would be nice to credit myself as being closer to the Ur-Spirit of Bacterial Enlightened Dairy, but I gotta keep it real.

At the KIR Church, they are strictly athiests, because they KEEP IT REAL.

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Housekeeping: Next Monday is the 1st, weigh-in day, so the next entry will be delayed by one day. 

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2339 cal
REFINE SUGAR %: +/- 10%

Seems every Monday I glide out the day easily while staying under my budget minimum, while by Friday it's almost impossible to stay below the budget maximum. I think this means two things:

1. I'm having a "calorie hangover" from the weekend of eating above the calorie maximum.
2. When I reach my final goal, my maintenance calorie budget will be higher than my current maximum.

This week's average was within budget, so that's a very good thing. While things that are straight up sugar (brownies, vegan ice cream, iced green tea) are counted, I do not count the sugar of the ricotta pancakes, the teriyaki pineapple meatballs, the smoothie, all of which are savory but have some sugar in them (other than the smoothie, which is sweet but has all the fiber and nutrition of whole fruit in it.) I'm of two minds, trying to get down to one....

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MONDAY COUNT: 2075
The weekend's eating was kept reasonable, with a ride to City Island on Sunday and a little bit too much homemade apple crisp and pie-spice ice cream that evening. While food shopping in the evening with Edie, decided I wanted to eat something fun for dinner -- had a very healthy lunch, could indulge for dinner. Got a box of 6 White Castle sliders, noticed the whole box's calorie count could work into my budget. A side of veg instead of fries and it's a reasonable dinner.

A year or two ago, at the end of a hard week at the restaurant, I'd get a box of these burgers, maybe match them with some frozen onion rings, then complete the meal with between a half and a full box of Entemann's donuts. Replacing onion rings and donuts with 6oz of string beans, it's what's for dinner now.

AM SNACK: 8:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, kolon bloe and whole milk, 300 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken sausage, roasted Brussel sprouts, baked potato with butter, 7oz diet sprite, 860 cal

PM SNACK: 3pm, momma salad, 60 cal

DINNER: 6:45pm, White Castle burgers, steamed string beans, 7oz diet sprite, 830 cal

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TUESDAY COUNT: 2200

Started the day with a homemade breakfast, finished the day with a dinner with two veg and without a starch component, wound up hitting my minimum. Went to sleep a little hungry, but was feeling down/angry/anxious about unrelated things, which I kinda harnessed into not eating more.

AM SNACK: 8:15am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, lemon ricotta pancakes, bacon, 685 cal
Had another kid and parent over for breakfast before they took Edie out for the day, so I made a nice breakfast. Did not know the calorie count until after eating. I actually served myself about 440 calories, but since Edie did not eat some of her meal, I ate it for her and POOF, 685. So easy to over eat.

PM SNACK: 1:15pm, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 2:45pm, vegetable patty & a jerk chicken patty, 730 cal

PM SNACK: 4:15pm, 7oz diet sprite, 0 cal

DINNER: 7:15pm, teriyaki pineapple chicken meatballs, health salad, string beans, 660 cal
Had to remove the planned whole wheat cous cous to hit the calorie budget after this morning's pancakes. Large pile of cabbage and string beans helped a lot, only 150 cal all together. The rest went into 12 meatballs, out of a large pack I picked up at Costco. Suspiciously juicy, I had to check the ingredients after I tore through them. "Teriyaki" simply means sweetened with sugar, salted up with soy sauce, and dosed with umami with some miso.  The sugar syrup probably added to the juiciness. Still, surprisingly palatable, not overly sweet or pineapply.
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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2305

Lifted weights in the morning, rode bike to Red Hook to do recruiting for my culinary class. Offered samples of brownies to lure them in, as tempting as it was to eat a bunch, it wasn't that hard to abstain. Took Edie up to Grandma's house in the afternoon. Despite an unmeasurable restaurant meal, felt hungryish in the evening so probably did not surpass my maximum budget.

AM SNACK: 8:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, smoothie, 380 cal

LUNCH: 1:30pm, quarter pounder, fries, diet coke, 900 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30 pm, momma salad, 100 cal

DINNER: 5:30pm, shrimp scampi over white rice, side salad, water,+/- 900 cal
Diner on the UES. Too many choices. Relatively healthy, but when this dish came, the whole surface of the plate was just a huge mound of rice. Pushed about 1/3 of it to the side, and other than a few nibbles of Edie's french fries, kept it relatively reasonable.

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, 7oz diet sprite, 0 cal

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THURSDAY COUNT: 2630

Went over the budget with a snack quickly following an unsatisfying dinner. After riding around 2 tots on a bike all over Brooklyn, was too tired to cook meals for the kids AND make myself proper dinner, so I popped in some  pizzas. Got too hungry to wait, and micro'd some pancakes. After eating, just not feeling satisfied, and ate some of Edie's chicken and the remnants of homemade brownies in the fridge. One thing you can say for sugar, when you consume it at the end of the meal, it switches off your hunger fast.

Don't feel too bad about going over the budget, the bike riding probably off-set  it to a reasonable degree.

BREAKFAST: 8:45am, full fat Fage yogurt with honey, vanilla & almonds, 365 cal

LUNCH:12:45pm, two almond butter & grape jelly on whole wheat multi grain bread sandwiches, momma salad, 7oz diet coke, 965 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, 14 oz diet sprite, 0 cal

DINNER: 6:45pm, Stouffer's french bread pizzas, 2 lemon ricotta pancakes, 1000 cal

PM SNACK: 7pm, piece of breaded chicken breast, homemade brownie, +/- 300 cal
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FRIDAY COUNT: 2485

A good day, got some chores done in the morning, had a nice afternoon out with the kids and friends. Got to take an over-due basics yoga class with the HVS and friends. A nice end to the week.

AM SNACK: 8:30am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 9am, kolon bloe with whole milk, 300 cal

AM SNACK: 11:30am. momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 1:30pm, veggie burger sub, potato chips, diet coke, 760 cal

SNICKLE SNACK: 8:15pm, black cod teriyaki, hijiki, basmanti rice, "corn bread", +/- 600 cal

SNICKLE SNACK: 9:30pm, vegan ice cream cone, +/- 400 cal

EVENING SNACK: 11pm, slice of streetza, +/- 300 cal

Hunter Gatherers Didn't Harvest Fritos

Hey, where the Fritos at?

Take the breadth and depth of all nutritional advice over the years, and you will have one hairy, contradictory stew. Eat no carbs, just protein and fat! But fat makes you fat! Too much protein gives you cancer!  Sit ups will flatten your tummy! It is impossible to non-surgically target fat! Drink 64oz of water a day! Drink only when thirsty! Well, another assumption about fitness & nutrition bites the dust, and the exercise industry isn't going to be happy. Y'know how exercise "revs up" your metabolism, so when you work out like crazy, your body becomes a FAT BURNIN' MO-SHEEN?!?! Nope. Nah gonna happen.

Gonna happen? Nah.

The popular assumption is that we're getting fat because we're sittin' around watchin' TV & eating Frito's. That is perhaps half right. Back before refrigeration and indoor plumbing and drive-thru fast food restaurants and Brawndo, poppa had to get out of the cave and do some high-energy hunting, while momma had to strap on Baby Bambam with some furs and vines and do some intense gathering. All that working out must have kept them thin and trim. They must have been moving around harder than Richard Simmons at Fatty Disco night.

So some scientists took it upon themselves to find some hunter-gathers in Tanzania, members of the Hazda tribe who keep it seriously old school. (Excuse me, srsly old skool.) They must be all skinny n' shiz because their metabolisms must be supercharged from working all day to get fed, right? Nope. After precise measurements involving observing walking via GPS and special drinking water that could mark energy expenditure and metabolic rate in each and every pee pee, the scientists found that the Hazda's metabolism were pretty much the same as the average American.

These findings upend the long-held assumption that our hunter-gatherer ancestors expended more energy than modern populations, and challenge the view that obesity in Western populations results from decreased energy expenditure. Instead, the similarity in daily energy expenditure across a broad range of lifestyles suggests that habitual metabolic rates are relatively constant among human populations. This in turn supports the view that the current rise in obesity is due to increased food consumption, not decreased energy expenditure.

It's not the TV, it's the Frito's. The Hazda's aren't hunting Big Macs, and they ain't gathering french fries. It what Michael Pollen has been banging on about for a while now: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Because a buffalo is a lot harder to hunt than an eggplant is to gather.

A wild Fritobeast, freshly killed and yet to be cleaned and gutted.

In the NY Time's commentary on this study, they go a bit further:

Close mathematical scrutiny of past studies of exercise and weight loss shows that that happy prospect (that if you exercise, your metabolism won’t drop as you lose weight or will even speed up) is, sad to say, unfounded. One of the few studies ever to have scrupulously monitored exercise, food intake and metabolic rates found that volunteers’ basal metabolic rates dropped as they lost weight, even though they exercised every day. As a result, although they were burning up to 500 calories during an exercise session, their total daily caloric burn was lower than it would have been had their metabolism remained unchanged, and they lost less weight than had been expected.

I lift weights twice a week and get in a long bike ride once a week, and on the face if it this time-consuming, inconvenient habit may directly be interfering with my quest to get slim. However, no one is saying don't exercise, as it still has many benefits. It makes you feel good, it builds muscle, it strengthens silly little things like lung capacity, reduces bad cholesterol, and builds bones. Just one of those benefits is not a huge reduction in weight. More precisely, you may lose weight, but not on a 1-to-1 ratio. All this time that people have marvelled at me for riding my bike so much but not losing weight, well, SCIENCE! For every 2,200 calories I burn on a long bike ride, the final effect after adjusting for slowing metabolism might be 2/3 of that.

All said and done, the current research still points to the same main way to lose weight: simply eat less. No special miracle machines, no magical foods, no exceptional way of  timing or combining foods. I would love to see a study of all weight-loss plans from the past 40 years and compare participant's success along the data which shows if they reduced calories or not. I suspect there would be a very large correlation. There is no harm in a Richard Simmons dance-a-thon if it makes all involved feel good and work towards controlling diet, even if cavemen didn't have access to his deal-a-meals way back when..

THE COUNT: 2320
Very sore this morning, particularly under my arms towards my back: pull-up muscles. When I did that successful negative pull-up yesterday, I got so excited I did it two more times, then increased my reps from 5 to 6 through my routine.

Very hungry in the evening, hard to not eat a snack and go over budget. Oddly enough, instead of watching TV, I cooked to keep busy. Having a dinner party Saturday night and B will be out of town, so want a homemade meal that takes minimal work to serve. So I made whole wheat ravioli from scratch, the filling with veg I picked up from today's CSA (squash, onion, Italian peppers, a jalapeno) with some good yogurt, a little egg and a handful of dried spices and salt. Did the math, the tiny little buggers are 21 cal/ravioli. (Yes, I did taste the mix for seasoning, but really, it had to be under 10 cal for the sampling...)

AM SNACK: 6:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8am, steel-cut oatmeal, 375 cal

LUNCH: 11:45am, Quarter Pounder, fries, diet coke, 890 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, momma salad, 80 cal

DINNER: 7:15pm, whole wheat pasta with turkey meatballs, homemade sauce and sauteed spinach, 7oz diet coke, 950 cal

EVENING SNACK: 9:15pm, 7oz diet sprite, 0 cal